Negotiating Imitation: Examining the Interactions of Consultants and Clients to Understand Institutionalization as Translation

Organizational scholars increasingly view institutionalization as a process through which actors adapt or translate seemingly successful practices in a field to create variations that are specific to their own organization. Yet little is known about how outsiders who seek to diffuse ‘best practice’ affect translation. We examined interactions between management consultants and their clients in two different consulting projects, which focused on embedding the practice of ‘lean’ in one and the practice of a quality improvement framework in the other. Our findings provide insights into the processes of translation through which promoters and adopters iterate at different stages to reach a compromise, illuminating how the evolution of an imported practice signals the outcome of a negotiation. Furthermore, we demonstrate that management practices are not translated in isolation but enveloped by peripheral practices that are adopted by association. We highlight how the peripheral practice of benchmarking, in both cases, was rarely contested or negotiated and thus proved more resistant to translation. Our analysis allows us to unpack the agency inherent within translation‐as‐negotiation and integrate research on diffusion and translation.     

Creatively escaping insularity and encouraging internationalism: British radicalism,history from below,and public relations historiography

In this article, we examine what PR history can learn from a small but internationally influential group of radical historians in Britain. In particular, we examine how they managed to be powerfully democratic through an imaginative sensitivity to the voices of people often excluded from history; through grounding research in specific, often small, localities, and communities; and paradoxically, managing to avoid enough of the insularity associated with the notorious “little Britain” mindset to attract interest and interactions from historians across the world. Our article highlights the relevance to PR history of the following four aspects: 1) their awareness of the need to interact locally and beyond national boundaries; 2) their concern for inclusion (especially for subjects excluded or marginalized in earlier historical accounts); 3) their strategies for escaping insularity and increasing interdisciplinarity; and 4) their illustrations of imagination as a vital component in historical writing. For contemporary PR history writing we argue: that the first aspect, the fusion of the local with the post-national, has become a necessity as globalization keeps expanding; that the second, strategic inclusiveness, has urgency for a field reflecting on the social shortcomings of its own organization-centered past; that the third, interdisciplinary, has intensified in utility as fields adapt to the massive growth in different kinds of knowledge (from big data to neuroscience); and that the fourth, passionate and engaged imagination, is needed for revisionist accounts of the past to help reclaim more prosocial futures.     

Through the Lens of Sexual Stigma: Attitudes Toward Lesbian and Gay Parenting

Drawing from the literature on sexual stigma, the principal aim of this study was to investigate predictors of heterosexual's internalization of negative attitudes regarding lesbian and gay parenting and the mediating role of beliefs in the controllability of homosexuality. A Portuguese sample of 1,430 heterosexual women and 502 heterosexual men responded to an online questionnaire about attitudes toward lesbian and gay parenting. Structural equation modeling was used to explore attitudinal predictors and mediation analysis. Mediation analyses revealed that sexual prejudice toward same-gender-parented families was predicted by gender, age, education, and religiosity, in that heterosexual men, those who were older, had less education, and were more religious held significantly more negative beliefs about lesbian and gay parenting, as well as lower perception of benefits associated with lesbian and gay parenting. Further, etiological beliefs mediated the effects of gender, age, and religiosity on sexual attitudes, highlighting the importance of the perception of controllability of homosexuality in justifying sexual prejudice.     

Family and Couple Variables Regarding Adherence in Type 2 Diabetes Patients in the Initial Stages of the Disease

This study analyzed which family and couple variables predicted adherence to standard care treatment, in patients recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The sample comprised 224 dyads assessed during the first year of diagnosis (T1) and 4 months later (T2). The results showed that family stress, dyadic adjustment, family coping, and positive support assessed by patients at T1 predicted medication adherence and glucose monitoring at T2. Positive support and dyadic adjustment, assessed by partners at T1, predicted patients' adherence to glucose monitoring and diet at T2. This study highlights the important role of the partner in patient`s adherence. Therefore, standard care in type 2 diabetes should be offered in the context of the dyad.     

The Phenomenon of Social Enterprises: Are We Keeping Watch on This Cultural Practice?

Social enterprises have reached world levels as an alternative to combat negative effects of the economy such as unemployment, poor distribution of income, and poverty, thus stimulating social entrepreneurship with local actions directed especially to excluded communities. This article corresponds to a study that uses the bibliometric method to analyze the world scientific literature on social enterprises in order to research on the possible existence of investigation projects that may have approached the cultural dimension of said phenomenon. Studies in this field may contribute to the establishment of social enterprises as a cultural practice, for the promotion of a more equitable social and economic development. The analysis of the scientific publications inherent to the topic, suggests, among other results, that the academic production is diverse, but there is still a lack of initiatives in order to explore new perspectives concerning the phenomenon. On the other hand, similarities in the motivation of the studies allow outlining 10 categories that evidence the most interest in the research on social enterprises.     

Governing ‘emotional’ life: passions,moral sentiments and emotions

The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century statement that passions and not inactive reason are the motives that decisively influence the will and constitute the true drivers of human action promoted a new object of problematization and control on the part of the theoreticians of the art of government. Since then, a battle has waged over the general designations and definitions of what ‘emotional’ life is, and different dispositives of ‘emotional’ power (or pathospower) have been developed as central mechanisms for governing human beings. Analysing the British discourse on governmentality from the period, I recount the history of the emergence of the three main modern concepts of ‘emotional’ life and of its respective power strategies: passions in the discourse of utilitarian liberalism, moral sentiments in the discourse of conservatism, and emotions in biological and evolutionist psychology that underlies eugenic politics.     

Effect of outliers on the GFI quality adjustment index in structural equation model and proposal of alternative indices

This work is intended to suggest modifications in the construction of the GFI index using robust methods for estimating the unrestricted sample covariance matrix, leading to new indices called GFI_(MCD) and GFI_(MVE). The validation of this proposal was made using Monte Carlo simulation methods, considering differences between the unrestricted sample covariance matrix and those imposed by the structural model, and different numbers of outliers generated by distributions with deviations from symmetry and excess kurtosis. It was concluded that for larger samples size (n ? 100), given that the outliers are from distributions that are symmetrical, the GFI_(MCD) and GFI_(MVE) present similar results, including samples with high percentages of outliers.     

An Intuitive Geometric Approach to the Gauss Markov Theorem

Algebraic proofs of Gauss–Markov theorem are very disappointing from an intuitive point of view. An alternative is to use geometry that emphasizes the essential statistical ideas behind the result. This article presents a truly geometrical intuitive approach to the theorem, based only in simple geometrical concepts, like linear subspaces and orthogonal projections.     

The conception of fashion products for children: reflections on safety parameters

The purpose of this study is to reflect on safety requirements for children's clothing, based on the standardization proposed by the ABNT (Technical Standardization Brazilian Association). Bibliographic research and case studies were considered on writing this work. We also discuss the importance of adding other safety requirements to the current standardization, as well as the increasing of the actual age range specified by the ABNT, following the children's clothing safety standardizations in Portugal and the United States, also stated here.     

The ergonomic evaluation of a virtual learning environment usability

The article presents the processes and the results of the application of some ergonomic techniques, used to evaluate the usability of the virtual learning environment adopted by the Distance Education Center of the Federal Institute of Espírito Santo - Brazil.